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167 pages

English

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Meet Eric Gill and Dave Hollins, once feted as two of the finest goalkeepers in Britain. Between them they have more stories to tell spanning the past ten decades than there are holes in a football net. Their unique friendship started as a rivalry, two men wrestling over the same goalkeeper jersey at Brighton & Hove Albion in the 1950s. Seventy years later they remain the best of pals, having lived long, eventful lives bookended by the horrors of World War Two and the Covid-19 pandemic. Journey back to when footballers earned GBP20 a week and goalkeepers wore string gloves, as Eric and Dave recall how they dodged Hitler's bombs before pitting their wits against some of sport's most iconic names: a list that includes Stanley Matthews, Pele and George Best not to mention their shared nemesis, Brian Clough. Touching, inspiring and searingly honest, Eric and Dave is a salutary reminder that youth is not a time of life but a state of mind.

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	08 août 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801503013
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Spencer Vignes, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501989
eBook ISBN 9781801503013
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CONTENTS
Introduction
1. We ll Meet Again
2. A Matter of Life and Death
3. The Third Way
4. Mr Consistent
5. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
6. Summertime Blues
7. Our Friends in the North
8. Frozen Out
9. 1966 and All That
10. A Place Without a Postcard
11. Time, Gentlemen
12. Shameful
13. Autumn
14. We Wunt Be Druv
Eric s Pearls of Wisdom
Dave s Pearls of Wisdom
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Photos
Also by Spencer Vignes
The Server
A Few Good Men: The Brighton Hove
Albion Dream Team
The Wimbledon Miscellany
Lost in France: The Remarkable Life and Death of Leigh
Roose, Football s First Superstar
The Train Kept A-Rollin : How the Train Song Changed the
Face of Popular Music
Bloody Southerners: Clough and Taylor s
Brighton Hove Odyssey
For those who play, for those who watch, and for those we ve lost
When you are a goalkeeper, there s no halfway. You can be a half good player out on the field somewhere, but you can t be a half good goalkeeper. They, they can make mistakes all day long. Score one goal and they re a hero. The goalie, he - or she - can play a great game all day. But, make one slip, and they ll say you are hopeless. That s the way it has always been.
And that s the way it will always be.
Eric Gill
You don t make many friends in football. At least not close ones. But I ve come to realise over the years that Eric and I are different. We ve been through so much, both together and as individuals. And we re still here. After all this time, getting on for 70 years from when we first met, we re still here.
Dave Hollins
INTRODUCTION
THIS IS a story that came dangerously close to never being told.
In May 2020, in my capacity as a freelance writer of umpteen years standing, I interviewed a man called Eric Gill - over the phone rather than face to face, what with Covid-19 having paralysed society. Way back when, Eric had been one of the finest goalkeepers in Britain, a Londoner who made headlines around the world by appearing in 247 consecutive matches for Brighton Hove Albion between February 1953 and February 1958, equalling a Football League record for goalies in the process (the curious among you will notice use of the word equalling there - that, my friends, is a story in itself).
Given football s intensely physical nature in those days, that achievement took some doing. Besides keeping the ball out of the net, goalkeepers also had to make do with being, to all intents and purposes, beaten black and blue every week by opposing centre-forwards, along with anyone else on the field of play who fancied having a go. Look up brutal in the Oxford English Dictionary and it will say the art of goalkeeping circa 1875 to 1960 . Or at least it should.
I d never spoken to Eric before, but I knew of him. Growing up in Sussex during the 1970s into the 1980s and supporting Brighton Hove Albion, I heard talk among older fans stood around me at home matches of the goalkeeper to beat all other goalkeepers, the one who d played year upon year without missing so much as a single match. Being a young keeper myself, albeit of limited potential, I couldn t help but be impressed. Here was a bona fide sepia superhero straight out of Path News - and he d played in my position for my favourite club.
However, it wasn t only Eric s story that interested me. Behind every first-choice goalkeeper, there s an understudy, the poor sod who has to wait their turn until the main man or woman falls from grace, or breaks their fingers, or gets spirited away by another club. Eric s unbroken run had lasted five years. People do less for murder, yet someone with the patience of a saint must have waited for his chance.
and waited.
and waited.
In time, I learned the identity of that saint - Dave Hollins. Signed as a teenager in 1955 to replace a couple of other goalkeepers who d grown tired of watching the paint dry, Dave got his hands dirty in Brighton s reserve team for three years until, out of the blue, the seemingly immovable Eric developed flu. Into the breach Dave stepped for three matches, doing well but nevertheless making way once Eric was fit again.
Six months later came another opportunity. Alas, this time things didn t work out quite so hunky-dory. As I write, Middlesbrough 9 Brighton Hove Albion 0 remains Middlesbrough s record league win and Brighton s heaviest-ever defeat. And Brian Clough - yes, that Brian Clough - scored five of them.
At this stage you could easily have forgiven Dave had he traded goalkeeping for, in the words of Monty Python, something completely different. But no. Get this - not only did Dave stay and fight for his place but he eventually usurped Eric, was called upon to represent Wales at under-23 level, joined Newcastle United in a big-money transfer and subsequently assumed the mantle of Welsh first-team goalkeeper, making his full international debut against Brazil and rooming with the great John Charles on away trips. Talk about redemption.
Anyway, back to my interview with Eric who, at the time we initially spoke, was a sprightly 89, living in the picturesque Sussex coastal town of Peacehaven. There we were, chatting away over the phone, and it s all fascinating stuff - playing in the 50s and 60s, becoming a minor celebrity, life after football, and so on. I mentioned Dave Hollins in passing and Eric spoke warmly of his former understudy and rival. Then, in a throwaway remark that very nearly escaped me, Eric let slip that they were still friends.
The journalist in me, sensing something out of left field, probed further. This, it emerged, was anything but the kind of friendship where people just send each other a Christmas card and that s about it. These two octogenarians had, at least until Covid arrived, met up every few weeks to chew the fat over a milky brew, lunch or a game of bowls. Actually, I take that back. Bowls, I now appreciate, is serious stuff and something that continues to satisfy both men s competitive urges, not a chew-the-fat kind of activity. Sixty-five years after football had first thrown them together, they were still thick as thieves.
Now, this struck me as truly astonishing, for three reasons.
One . Footballers aren t very good at keeping in touch with each other. They re not so much ships that pass in the night, more like ships that put into port and spend time berthed alongside each other before scattering to all points of the compass. Eventually they retire. Sure, there are reunion dinners for the more successful teams, while some clubs preside over former players associations that organise occasional events. However, the hard yards behind such affairs tend to be put in by people who remember those players fondly, rather than the actual players themselves. The sad truth is that when a player leaves a club, they re unlikely to speak to the majority of their ex-team-mates again.
Two . Eric and Dave were rivals. Although it s often said there s an unofficial union among goalkeepers, formed in the knowledge that one mistake on their part can lose a match or, at worst, end careers, this empathy doesn t always extend to keepers at the same club. It certainly didn t in the 1950s when players in the first team automatically received a better wage than those in the reserves. With bills to pay and a woman s place still deemed to be largely in the home, unable to contribute financially to the running of the household, resentment could easily brew. Then there was the retained list, drawn up by managers at the end of every season. If you weren t in the first XI there was every possibility you might not make the list and, consequently, would be seeking employment elsewhere come May. In such circumstances, you can hardly blame footballers for being, to quote Eric, For myself and nobody else.
Three . I ve written about sport for many years and I d never come across a genuine friendship between former team-mates or opponents that had lasted so long. This was different to, say, long-retired former tennis players I knew who renewed acquaintances once a year over a bottle of red in the private restaurants of Wimbledon. Dave had known Eric longer than he d known his wife Jackie (putting that into context, Dave and Jackie first met in April 1957). They were the kind of natural pals who didn t need an occasion to bring them together. I spoke to several of my peers in the sports press fraternity and they couldn t think of anything like it either. As far as I and seemingly everybody else could work out, theirs appeared to be the firmest, most enduring friendship in elite British sport.
I wrote my article about Eric. Three months later, having been given Dave s telephone number by Eric, I also interviewed and wrote an article about Dave. Both pieces attracted much warmth and attention.
which helped fan the flames of what came next.
As a journalist, very, very occasionally you ll